It wasn't special...I'm a fool..I don't think I can do this

Does she give therapy to rocks?

Your therapist cares for you because she is still your therapist. There are many many folks on this board who have been cruelly abandoned by their therapists and are perfectly justified in feeling uncared for by them. As long as your therapist still keeps you in her appointment book, still emails you and returns your messages, and still opens her office door to you, well, I don't think you have evidence of an uncaring therapist. She may not care enough for your liking, but that is totally different than not caring at all.

Your insight on this matter is distorted, but that doesn't mean your insight is wacked in every and all things. Just trust that this is an area where you have a blindspot and that therapy will uncover the what,whens, and whys all in due time. Most of us have an area where we lack clarity. You're in good company.

If the rock paid her, she probably give it therapy and do all the same things for it. But yeah, I am currently not seeing how her doing her job is caring. I know it must be because I've heard it over and over again. But I'm familiar with that concept of caring and, no, it doesn't seem like enough or anything much at all.

I think your letter to T is very well written and quite clear. My ruptures with T usually lead to some kind of important breakthrough and tend to bring us closer together, so I am hoping that this will happen for you too....((( HUGS )))

Somewhere in the midst of my first round of therapy, I realized that a lot of my interpretations of people's behavior were flat out wrong. One of the first things I remember, and it was well around 20 years ago, was that I thought my boss was trying to control me and to push me in a direction in my work that I didn't want to go. I still remember how it felt to realize that she wasn't trying to "make" me do anything, but that she just wanted to support me in what was a difficult part of my work (that I had actually expressed interesting in wanting to accomplish). It was really that she was being encouraging and offering her assistance, not "force." This realization made me feel like my world was spinning, and I started to check in small ways into my other social relationships. Was this particular friend signalling me to go away when she canceled our lunch date? Was this acquaintance mad at me because I thought I saw an angry look on her face when she said "hi"? I didn't usually ask people directly, but I did more resilient actions like calling that friend again and asking her to lunch, and she talked about how her crazy aunt had called her up and drained her of all her social resources that day. I said "hi" to that person the next time I saw them and this time I got a warm response.

Could it be, I wondered, that other people's behavior, even if it seemed like it was, actually said very little about me? I also wondered if I could really be so "off" in my interpretations of the messages that other people sent me.

Eventually, although it's so easy to fall into the negative interpretations and to see what other people do as reflecting on me and my worth, I learned that I needed to change how I saw what other people do and don't do as it reflects the orbit in my world. I came to understand that the dysfunctional family I grew up in had given me lots of messages that X means Y and not only was that causing me pain, it was screwing up my relationships with other people big time.

If I hadn't learned at least some of this lesson, I wouldn't be married now, in a mostly happy way, in which I can freely communicate with my H and my son. I wouldn't have long term and positive friendships, people who know about my history and love and support me anyway. Friends who have really been through difficult events with me and have shown me what friendship is all about.

I don't know you, obviously, and I don't know what your social world is like. Maybe you don't have any trouble connecting with people, developing intimacy, and having lasting and meaningful relationships. But if you do, you might want to consider that this issue you are currently having with your T is a little microcosm of what is causing your difficulties. As other people have said to you in this thread, the only thing that has changed for you is your interpretation of your T's behavior. I don't believe that anything your T said, about lunch or otherwise, is the problem. It is your interpretation of what she said that is the problem. And that is what is messing you up. I feel only compassion for you and how difficult this is for you. But I think you have to find a way to address how and why you are so stuck on interpreting your T as "not caring" or you won't be able to move forward in social life without having this come to bite you in the @ss repeatedly.

That last question is an interesting one, but first and foremost I just have to say that I can empathize with how you are feeling about your therapist.

Pretty much the same thing happened to me. I was driving along in my car feeling pretty good about things when all of sudden my brain played a really horrible horrible trick on me. I realized, or thought I did, that my therapist actually likely viewed me as a collection of symptoms. Something to be treated. Very cold, very clinical. He kept a file on me and how I was feeling ( he actually didn't, but boy I certainly thought he did). He would review the file and devise interventions.

It was a horrible horrible realization. I felt as though I had been punched in the gut, very foolish for being suckered in - one more time - into believing someone cared for me.

I carried that feeling for a very long time, but, for some reason, kept on going to therapy. Eventually I brought it up with him.

I remember very clearly saying that there was absolutely no love in therapy.

He replied that there was no therapy without love.

I didn't buy into that immediately, but with time I came to realize that he was absolutely correct.

I say give what has happened some time. Sit with what you know (there is a reason you felt as though she cared, and it is a good one) and sit with what you think (which may or may not be the case). With your therapist try to establish what therapy is and what it isn't.

I think the "truth" is that therapy exist in the "in between". It is rather clincial AND it is about love. All in all, I found it to be good enough - perhaps a little more that good enough, but not entirely "all that".

Now, about being wrong all the time in therapy. I firmly accept the notion of "brilliant insanity" - that if we could know a person's entire history then every single thing they said or did in any situation at any given time would make perfect sense. It would be absolutely positively right for them. It is their truth.

I think the problem comes when our "truths" get in the way of what we want for ourselves. When they interfere with our lives. Of course, we get to decide what truths we keep and what ones we shed.

Those we decide to shed we have to look at and accept our responsibility for maintaining them. It's not that we are wrong, it's that we just want a better way.

You will make it through this upset, although it is a big one. I don't know what will happen of course, you could retreat, you could dive headlong further into the relationship, or you could do a little of both until the waters settle out.

It will be okay. I wish you peace as you navigate this.

I like this.

I think if therapy provided all the loving and caring that we wanted then it would be dangerous. There would be no motivation to leave and work out our problems so that we can connect with people out in the real world. The point of therapy is to uncover the holes in our lives so that we can fill them. Therapy is not supposed to fill those holes.

Anne 2.0, you're post is so thoughtful and there is a lot of hard truth in it. I'm still struggling with the 'wanting to lick my wounds' phase, so it is hard to accept it all.

I have a handful of close friends that I've known since childhood. Around the time my ED started and my subsequent SUI attempt, I put a wall up as far as meeting new people/friends. I never let anything get more than superficial. T was the first person in almost 8 years that I was trying to let past that barrier.

Elliemay, thanks a million for your kind words. I wish my T would say something like this to me. She's never said anything of the sort. I guess she takes that tact that I should just know these things, but I can't trust that or see it.

If I were going into my session right now, and T asked me 'how's it going', this is what I'd like to be able to say:

Not great. I'm just really confused. My heart hurts. If my life were a tv show or a movie, I'd have turned it off or left the room by now thanks to my embarrassing, colossal mistake. If you care, I don't know how to tell or how to hold onto it. I don't know what it means. And, based on the nature of our misunderstanding, I fear it's not enough.

I think this is right. My T said something about having to have 'one foot in and one foot out of the client's process.'